“That,” he said, “I can do.”
Quentin walked past carrying a coil of cable. “The two of you need an audience this early?”
“You’ll have one at five-thirty,” Rowan answered. “Try to be on time.”
“I’ve been here since dawn. You’re welcome.”
By eight-thirty, a small collection of volunteers had arrived. Rowan’s mother Lillian brought linens ironed so sharply that Quentin was afraid to touch them. A cousin named Darius arrived with ice and coolers. An older family friend, Mrs. Ingram, brought flowers from her garden in buckets lined with towels. The roses were not all the same size; a few were already beginning to open. Bethany loved them more for that.
A longtime Parks employee, Marcus Doyle, stopped by in a municipal pickup to check the trash cans and confirm that the family had the right number of chairs. He had worked with Hiram as a teenager. He was now broad through the shoulders, with gray in his beard and a careful way of carrying himself whenever he approached the pavilion.
“Your father would complain about that west gutter,” he said, pointing upward.
“My father complained about every gutter,” Bethany replied.
“Because somebody had to.”
Marcus examined a loose chair leg, tightened its fastener, and refused the offer of breakfast. Before leaving, he placed a hand on the nearest support post.
“Good place for a wedding,” he said. “He’d have liked that.”
It was the first time all morning Bethany had to work to keep her voice steady.
At ten, Alma arrived with garment bags and a list written on the back of a grocery receipt. She looked around, appraised the flowers, and immediately began to reorganize the arrangements Bethany had spent an hour making. Bethany let her. This was a day on which a mother deserved a few unnecessary decisions.
The church bus was due around noon. Pastor Estelle Quimby, seventy in spirit if only sixty-six by her own insistence, would ride with them and officiate. She had presided over Bethany’s baptism and Hiram’s funeral. She called everybody younger than her “baby” and everybody older than her “honey,” and neither group dared object.
“Five o’clock the team arrives,” Alma said, checking the list. “Five-thirty the ceremony. Tell me again why the officers are coming at five if you keep telling everybody no uniforms.”
“It’s an honor guard, Mama. It’s a gift.”
“Then accept the gift. Your daddy would have.”
“Daddy would have asked why six grown people were waving swords at a wedding.”
“Then he’d have polished every sword himself.”
Bethany could not disagree.
Across the lake a motorboat started, rippling the reflection into pieces. The morning felt ordinary and promising. A girl from Rowan’s school had sent him a message wishing them luck. One of Bethany’s colleagues had sent a photograph of a lopsided cake labeled CHIEF’S DAY OFF. Quentin had already tripped over his own cable and accused the ground of poor planning.
None of them knew that Candace Wadsworth had opened her bedroom curtains, seen the chairs through the trees, and decided the people below needed to be taught what Saturday meant on her side of Harrow Lake.
Chapter 7: The Woman in Rollers
Candace arrived shortly after noon with Lorna, two coolers, a roll of wide packing tape, and the confidence of someone who had never been told to turn around at a doorway.
She did not read the sign at the pavilion entrance. The town’s temporary booking notice had been placed beside the waste bins, where an ordinary visitor could see it. Candace walked past without slowing. She was looking at the chairs.
“What on earth is this?” she said.
Bethany, carrying two folding chairs across the grass, heard the question and turned. Candace’s sunglasses were large and mirrored; her white linen blouse had a narrow navy trim that matched the scarf around her neck. She looked as if she were about to host a pleasant lunch for people she had already approved.
